LAGOS — A Non-Governmental Organisation, the Human Rights Watch, HRW, has said that government may be underplaying what transpired in  Baga, Borno State.

According to HRW, Baga residents told its officials  that soldiers ransacked the town after the Boko Haram militant group attacked a military patrol, killing a soldier.

“Community leaders said immediately after the attack they counted 2,000 burned homes and 183 bodies. Satellite images of the town analyzed by Human Rights Watch corroborate these accounts and identify 2,275 destroyed buildings, the vast majority likely residences, with another 125 severely damaged,” the organisation said.
The HRW also added that it interviewed seven residents of Baga who fled the town on the night of the devastation.
Witness account by HRW

A 27-year-old woman who lived in the “Hausa Quarters” of Baga told Human Rights Watch that on the night of April 16, soldiers dragged a man out of a house in her neighborhood and shot him.

HRW also noted that residents recalled hearing some explosions as well as gunfire on the night of the attack and that  a farmer described how soldiers set fire to houses in the “Kampala Ward” of Baga on the morning of April 17.

“Many fled the town. One resident, a 42-year-old-fisherman, told Human Rights Watch that while he was fleeing he saw two men in civilian clothes, whom he assumed were Boko Haram members because they were not in uniform, running while firing assault rifles.

“Residents said as they were fleeing the heavy gunfire, they saw bodies in the streets and in front of houses,” the report added.

It added that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, which in 2010 opened a “preliminary examination” of the situation in Nigeria, which indicated that crimes committed by Boko Haram members might constitute crimes against humanity, and members of the Nigerian security forces might also have committed serious human rights violations in their operations against Boko Haram.